People

March 20, 2017

Kaushal Bag, the owner of the mobile app ‘Helping Hands’ was found dead in his Ashokanagar residence in Nashik, Maharashtra. The 21-year-old IT Engineer who graduated from the K K Wagh College had hanged himself to death. The techie became popular worldwide when he created the app ‘Helping Hands’ which helped rescue more than 20,000 people who were victims of the 2015 Chennai floods.

In a report by The Times of India, Helping Hand, a free application made by Bag, was downloaded by nearly 2 crore people across the country in December 2015 when the floods had hit Chennai. Thousands of SMSes were sent that were routed through his server during the floods. Bag had identified the location of the stranded people and informed the NGOs working on ground. Bag’s efforts were even appreciated by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. The same app was used in Nashik and Ujjain Kumbh Mela to locate missing people and also during the Laksha Deepotsava, a huge religious gathering held in November 2016 at Dharmasthala in Karnataka.

“He had hanged himself to death around 3.20pm and his family took him to the hospital, but the doctors declared him brought dead by 4.20pm,” said a police officer from Nashik to The News Minute. He added that a video of a suicide note was found on his mobile phone. “He asked for forgiveness from his parents and friends for committing suicide, but he did not say why he was taking the step. We are investigating the case”, the Police officer concluded.

While the parents have confirmed that he did not go through depression, the Police are investigating all the other probabilities of committing suicide.